Greetings! I have been lurking for a few days, and thought, "gee, how rude!" So, here is my intro. I've been studying Buddhism for around 8 years now, with no formal teachings, no teacher and no particular affinity for any one school. I figure I am just trying to understand this experience as a whole and when the time is right, a teacher or more formal sangha will appear. It's magic, right?

Anyway, I prolly won't have much to say, I am more interested in absorbing knowledge now, figuring I will forever be a student - or at least a few more lifetimes based on my current progress . I sorta found this site after growing tired of another, more rigid e-sangha website, and I look forward to gaining knowledge here.

He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion … ...He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them … he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.John Stuart Mill

Welcome aboard. You wrote "I figure I am just trying to understand this experience as a whole and when the time is right, a teacher or more formal sangha will appear. It's magic, right?"

Well, not magic really, because we have accumulated a lot of unwholesome inclinations that will seek to have their way (even when it comes to Dhamma, part of us seeks comfort in a clinging way) but we are also accumulating wisdom that guides us in the right way. There are these kind of conditions at work. But I like you attitude to stay open and wait to know where to really devote oneself. I'm still waiting!

"To reach beyond fear and danger we must sharpen and widen our vision. We have to pierce through the deceptions that lull us into a comfortable complacency, to take a straight look down into the depths of our existence, without turning away uneasily or running after distractions." -- Bhikkhu Bodhi

"No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man." -- Heraclitus